90th and last minute of play. Free kick near the penalty area. Louis Perez places his ball and sends a strike from the goalkeeper to equalize at 1-1. The 23-year-old Parisian exults and we understand it. On this gray weekend in mid-November in Kansas City, around forty recruiters from MLS and USL (American Second Vision) came to Swope Soccer Village, Sporting Kansas City’s training center, to observe a selection of the best country’s university players. Louis Perez is one of the sixty elected officials who try to prove themselves for three days before the big MLS Draft scheduled for January 20. “It’s always a pleasure to score. Overall, I think I’ve shown that I have more than enough level to succeed“, Believes the midfielder who can evolve in recovery or in number 10, in front of the attackers. Another Frenchman takes part in this annual camp, Sofiane Djefall, a student at the University of Oregon after his visit to the FC Nantes training center.
Louis Perez had a journey of ups and downs before flying to the United States. He took his first steps in the youth teams of PSG, where he was successively sidelined and then recalled before being finally not retained by the Ile-de-France club at the age of 16. “I bounced back at the Troyes training center the following year, where I was notably captain in the national U19, he recounts. But then I was sent to the reserve team following a change of coach. It really disappointed me and I started to give up ”. It is his father who will re-motivate him, after his son had attended a presentation of Elite Athletes a few months earlier at the Troyes training center, an agency which offers players in situation of failure in France a chance to play football and study in the United States. “I was invited in 2017 to a detection day at Clairefontaine, where I played in front of American university coaches. It went well, I received a lot of offers. My father helped me sort it out and I decided to join the University of Central Florida (UCF) ”.
In Orlando, Louis Perez landed in the second university in the country with 65,000 students, ultramodern facilities and an ideal living environment, under the sun and palm trees. “The infrastructures are much better than in any training center in France, and the staff takes great care in carrying the equipment, the water bottles ”, details the Francilien. “From a pitch point of view, Europe is better technically and tactically, but physically and in spirit, it’s great, with matches engaged and the will to play”. Beyond football, Louis Perez explains that he has grown enormously since his arrival in the United States. “I am very happy to have been able to get out of the French mentality, which is sometimes too closed, too critical. The Americans taught me to have more team spirit ”, explains the one who is preparing a diploma in interpersonal communication. “I was still a child in France, and I have become a man here ”.
Louis Perez’s performances with the Knights, the University of Florida soccer team, caught the eye of several MLS clubs, who invited him to the Kansas City Combine. Marco Ferruzzi, director of football at FC Dallas, is among those concerned. “He was good Friday night, and he scored a great goal. He has a very good left foot, he is one of the players we are looking for ”. At the head of recruitment at FC Dallas for 16 years, Marco Ferruzzi appreciates the profile of players trained in Europe like Louis Perez. “It’s part of the strategy of FC Dallas and MLS to recruit technical players from abroad, and to bring them more athletic baggage, in a demanding championship like ours”.
Positioned mostly in defensive midfielder during the three matches of the weekend, Louis Perez impressed with his sense of placement, passing, and his ball strike. Enough to sign his first professional contract on January 20 during the draft? Nothing is less certain, as Jérôme Meary, founder of the Elite Athletes agency, explains. “Only a few international players are allowed to be under contract at each club. The MLS is developing and the teams have more and more money, and we see them more and more keeping these places to recruit already experienced and dear players ”. Information that does not affect the morale of Louis Perez, who intends to win in MLS. “I don’t regret for a second my choice to go to the US and I think I have a good chance of turning professional. And if that doesn’t work, it’s not just football in life. I have a diploma and my brain is on my mind now ”.
